On-demand software to slash price of PLM

Stand by for a shake-up in engineering management software. US-based Arena Solutions, which rents its own PLM (product lifecycle management) software and is already providing it to some substantial organisations, is coming to Europe and probably the UK this year. The price is what’s likely to change everything: $1,000 per user per year, or $200 per user per year for view only. For a company wanting a mix around say 10—15 users, that’s about $1,000 to $1,500 per month – and implementation seems potentially very fast. Compare that with conventional PLM systems: suddenly ASP (application service provision) looks very attractive. And there’s a restricted user workgroup system that’s even cheaper than that. What’s more, Arena is offering the first 12 months usage free! “We are making PLM available to tens of thousands of companies that couldn’t afford it before,” says Michael Topolovac, chief executive officer of Arena Solutions. “We want users to do a really solid test drive.” For the doubters who saw ASP for ERP systems come and mostly go before, he makes the point that earlier ASP offerings, based on using a third party client/server system, lacked the economies of scale. But with systems designed from the ground up for secure Internet delivery, Topolovac insists it works, enabling secure and easy collaboration for distributed engineering development groups and supply chains anywhere, anytime – and without the cost and complexity of conventional PLM implementations. “I’ve invested in a multi-million dollar infrastructure: that’s what enables this on-demand model to work and to scale,” says Topolovac. “We haven’t got to a fraction of the limit of the system yet. It will scale to run astronomically large numbers of users – and we can add more infrastructure if we need to.” In fact, he claims virtually zero impact on his server infrastructure as usage has scaled to date. He also notes that his deployment costs Arena nothing – and you begin to understand why it’s available so cheaply. With no risk, no IT to buy, and only some good PLM consultancy required to help you get the best out of your data, it’s not difficult to understand how growth to date for this pay as you go service has been 200/300% per year. “Our solution dramatically increases our customers’ ability to keep pace with fast growth by getting their product development infrastructure in place and operating quickly. Yet it does so without requiring large upfront or long-term expenditures,” said Topolovac. “With our technology, companies large and small have an unparalleled mechanism to safely and confidently manage their product initiatives on-demand.” Users in the US include Color Kinetics, Align Technology, Sierra Wireless, Infinera, Asante Technologies, ESS Technology, Novera Optics and Zassi Medical Evolutions. “Asante moved from Agile to Arena to support our model of leveraging our partners through the Internet,” says David Kichar, vice president of operations for Asante Technologies. “Virtualisation is a powerful force in today’s competitive market, and we need partners that can help us take advantage of it. Arena lets us focus on meeting our customers’ needs and requirements instead of on managing software applications.” Novera Optics chose Arena PLM when it was considering how to involve its team in Korea. “The on-demand Arena PLM service was an obvious choice,” says Isaac Ohel, vice president of operations. “With a client/server solution we would have had to worry about IT costs and headaches at every offsite location, not to mention here at home. Instead we get hassle-free global access, ease of use and full-featured PLM functionality at a truly affordable price.”